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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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First, the meritocracy is based on an overly narrow definition of talent. Our system rewards those who can amass technical knowledge. But this skill is only marginally related to the skill of being sensitive to context. It is not related at all to skills like empathy. Over the past years, we’ve seen very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating.

Eric Raymond is always worth reading.

I said “Increasingly it’s not just the classic hard-core unemployables (alcoholics, criminal deviants, crazies) that can’t pull enough weight to justify a paycheck; it’s the marginal ones, the mediocre, and the mildly dysfunctional.” And I pointed at a cause: “We’ve spent the last seventy years increasing the hidden overhead and downside risks associated with hiring a worker — which meant the minimum revenue-per-employee threshold below which hiring doesn’t make sense has crept up and up and up, gradually. This effect was partly masked by credit and asset bubbles, but those have now popped.”

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It is a measure of how much the world has changed that something like this is considered news.

When I was in the Navy, he would have been tried and hanged by now.

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A society is formed by the voluntary bonding of individuals into overlapping, ever-changing groups whose members strive to serve each others’ emotional and material needs. Government — regardless of its rhetoric — is an outside force that cannot possibly replicate societal bonding, or even foster it. At best, government can help preserve society — as it does when it deters aggression from abroad or administers justice. But in the main, government corrodes society by destroying bonds between individuals and dictating the terms of social and economic intercourse — as it does through countless laws, regulations, and programs, from Social Security to farm subsidies, from corporate welfare to the hapless “war” on drugs, from the minimum wage to affirmative action. On balance, the greatest threat to society is government itself.

And that is libertarianism in a nutshell.

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Most of the power, of course, will be obtained from the rapidly rotating corpse of the late Liberal Lion, Senator Ted Kennedy. The wind farm is just there for cover, as in money laundering.

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‘Zenergy’ eco-home gets award from local senator anyway.

Of course. Facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way of The Narrative.

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Not really news, but a useful reminder.

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When reading science fiction, I refuse to accept as credible any alien species that isn’t at least as strange as the Japanese.

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Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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Here is what really happened: there was a bubble in housing prices. The bubble was mostly the result of government policy–loose money, combined with pressure on banks to make bad loans to unqualified home buyers. It all worked for a while because Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, under the leadership of Congressman Barney Frank and others, created a secondary market for shaky mortgages. Goldman Sachs participated in this market, downstream, along with many other players. But the whole thing wasn’t an accident or a conspiracy, it was government policy. The home price bubble could have only one possible result. All bubbles burst–there is nothing else they can do–and the bursting of a bubble is always painful. The whole disaster that began in 2008 was the inevitable result of government policy, which is why Senators are so anxious to pass the buck to Goldman Sachs.

I’m not a particular fan of either Goldman Sachs or Congress, but today’s hearing confirms that, given a choice, I’d rather have Goldman Sachs regulating Congress than Congress regulating Goldman Sachs. Goldman’s employees are much smarter, considerably more honest, and far more likely to have my interests at heart.

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No indication of whether Perry let the coyote draw first.

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A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical Christians said they had uncovered remnants of Noah’s Ark on its legendary mountain resting place in Turkey.

‘Right. What’s a cubit?’

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Oh, no!

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A 10-year-old girl has stunned doctors in Australia after she survived being stung by the world’s most venomous creature.

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New York Magazine has a long profile of Sarah Palin up right now. Its focus is more publicity, personality and celebrity, than politics. The profile reduces my probability that Palin will make a serious run (as opposed to a pro forma one) for the highest office in 2012. It also leaves me impressed by how quickly and efficiently she’s leveraged her celebrity and gone from moderately upper middle class** in income (and in serious debt due to legal bills after the 2008 campaign) to wealthy. Some Republicans are apparently worried about her becoming the “face of the party,” something that crops up now and then in the media, but it doesn’t seem like they really have to worry that much unless the party has no real substance and is rooted only in style and the need to get elected. As for Sarah Palin, whatever you think of her politics or personality, she’s offering a concrete product distributed through the private sector. The article mentions that her book was a major reason that Random House generated a profit last year! Whatever criticisms one might lodge, she’s not getting rich by being a rent-seeker, as so many of our public and private sector elites have become. In fact the article points to a whole industry of liberal critique which has emerged around her, so she’s not even capturing all the wealth that she’s responsible for (spillover effects).

Doing well by doing good.

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Yes, you have to download a PDF, but it’s still worth reading. Conscription would appear to be on its face contrary to the 13th Amendment, and yet the half-dozen times it’s been challenged in the courts such challenges have been dismissed with judicial handwaving that involved no serious consideration of the issues. You can have all the laws in place that you want, but if those who are charged with enforcing the law don’t feel like it, you’re screwed.

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Stephen Brust, despite being a Benighted Socialist, is one of the best writers of the English language alive today. (Read any of his Vlad Taltos books and you’ll agree. Better yet, read the brilliant fanfic Firefly episode he wrote.)

His Significant Other just had a radical mastectomy and they’re fund-raising to pay for it. Follow the link to participate.

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Lots of commentators, including yours truly, have pointed out the ways in which modern environmentalism is like a religion. For last week’s Earth Day festivities, economist Paul Rubin had a provocative piece in the Wall Street Journal detailing the ways in which environmentalism confers group identity on it adherents. In this way, it functions more like ancient tribal religions than like universal religions such as Christianity that transcend the tribe.

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Slow news day.

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And rightly so, I should think.

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Police said the man and two accomplices had been armed with a knife and a firearm when they approached pupils outside the secondary school in Umbumbulu, near Durban in the country’s KwaZulu-Natal province.

It is claimed the trio tried to rob the youngsters of their mobile phones and money but fled when the students began pelting them with stones.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

The Other McCain overturns a rock.

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The new $100 bill is the most sophisticated attempt yet to combat forgery. Since colonial times, the U.S. has engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with criminals and foreign governments eager to pass off brilliant fakes.

You know, it’s almost impossible to ‘counterfeit’ a gold coin….

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Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Gates of Vienna takes a fairly deep look into the way the Crust thinks.

It is not a pretty sight.

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A fascinating look at where you would be if you had bought a piece of the action rather than a mere product.

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I guess I won’t be buying an iPad after all. Wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of the secret police.

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This is the girl Prince William ought to marry.

Check it out.

Well, that’s what it looks like.

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According to police reports, Conrad Zdzierak, 30, is alleged to have used the £450 silicon mask in an audacious string of six bank robberies in Ohio.

Guess it didn’t work.

But after a tip-off, officers found Zdzierak staying at a nearby hotel.

Ah, it would have worked, but he was betrayed.

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A Native American tribe from the Grand Canyon has accepted a substantial settlement from an Arizona university after accusing its scientists of “genetic piracy”.

How magnanimous of them. (What is ‘genetic piracy’? Your guess is as good as mine. Making your Y-chromosome walk the plank?)

One subsequent research article suggested the Havasupai had originated in Asia, before crossing the Bering Sea and settling in the Grand Canyon.

That was a conclusion the Havasupai did not like as they believe they originated in the canyon and are closely spiritually connected to it.

Science gives way to myth, and the world is lessened thereby.

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You can make a mainframe from the things you have at home.

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In a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa fumes that the source of the funds for the $4.7 billion repayment is not GM earnings, but rather a Treasury escrow account. He chides the company and the administration for suggesting in recent statements that the money is coming from GM earnings.

Grassley writes that GM’s early repayment of the federal loan is aimed at diverting attention from another uncomfortable issue – the big break the car company would get on a proposed tax to recoup TARP losses. GM is expected to generate some of the biggest losses in the TARP program, but it won’t have to pay any money under the so-called TARP tax the Obama administration wants to impose on large financial institutions.

Oh, no! GM wouldn’t lie to us, would they?

Freeberg has some great ideas.

1. ILLEGAL Immigration reform. As in ILLEGAL. Did I say ILLEGAL?
2. Putting-up-with-communist-assholes reform.
3. Domestic drilling reform. Drill-baby-drill.
4. Portraying-the-military-in-movies reform.
5. Aggressive interrogation reform. Which means start doing it.
6. This-Is-Sparta reform. If our soldiers rough up terrorists we don’t throw them in the brig, we give ‘em medals.
7. Deficit spending reform. Budget deficits simply aren’t allowed anymore. Learn to deal, Congress.
8. Birth certificate reform. Just pull the thing out, President-Elect, like I have to do when I apply for a passport.
9. ACORN/Census reform. Anyone who put you guys in charge of this, is banned from public service for life.
10. You-go-first reform. Congress makes laws that affect the rest of us, Congress lives under those laws first.

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Faster, please.

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A California-based consumer watchdog called, er… Consumer Watchdog is calling for a Department of Justice investigation into Google.

The group, supported by mobile entrepreneur Simon Buckingham and lawyers for two price comparison websites, praised the DOJ for its action against Google Books and the FTC probe into the acquisition of AdMob.

But Consumer Watchdog said Google was unfairly using its dominance in search to the detriment of both advertisers and users.

If you get a nameplate, you can be a ‘consumer watchdog’ too. (In the Good Old Days, such people were called ‘busybodies’ and told to butt out. In these degenerate modern times, however, they are ‘consumer advocates’ and given great deference.)

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Thanks, guys.

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‘Judge, he needed killin’.’

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A South Korean warship was destroyed by an elite North Korean suicide squad of ‘human torpedoes’ on the express orders of the regime’s leader, Kim Jong-il, according to military intelligence reports.

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Archaeologists in Italy have unearthed the remains of a 6th century BC temple-style building complete with detailed assembly instructions which they have likened to an Ikea do-it-yourself furniture pack.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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I am not making this up.

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Hey, don’t mess with the goat.

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The Sunni militia was not at home when the killings happened. The armed men cut the throats of his three young sons and shot his wife and a daughter in the head, police said.

At least the Mafia leaves your family alone.

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We report, you decide.